Software development can be a great fit for an ADHD brain: hard puzzles, fast feedback, and the occasional six-hour stretch where everything clicks. It can also be a minefield of rabbit holes, half-finished branches, constant pings and estimates that are off by a factor of three. Here's what research says, and what helps.

What do we know about developers with ADHD?

Not as much as we should, but it's growing.

In a 2024 qualitative case study of people with ADHD working in software engineering, Grischa Liebel and colleagues found that participants struggled with task organization and estimation, keeping attention on work, and working with others, and also reported physical and mental health strain. They also described real strengths: increased creativity, doing well on puzzle-like problems, and thinking ahead about how systems fit together (Liebel et al., 2024).

An earlier study at a large software company combined interviews with neurodiverse engineers (including people with ADHD) and a survey of 846 engineers, to understand what held them back at work and how employers could help (Morris et al., 2015).

And for developers in general, a survey of 379 professionals found that people feel productive when they complete tasks without significant interruptions or context switches, even though observation showed they switch a lot (Meyer et al., 2014). With ADHD, those switches are harder to recover from, so protecting against them pays off twice.

How do you stop rabbit holes from eating the day?

You look up one error message. Forty minutes later you're reading about the history of a framework you'll never use. Curiosity is a strength, and it needs a fence.

  • Timebox the search. "15 minutes to find the answer, then I ask someone or try another route." Set a timer you can see.
  • Write the question first. One line: "Why does the login redirect loop on Safari?" When a page doesn't help answer it, close it.
  • Park, don't follow. Interesting but unrelated? Save the tab to a "later" list and close it. It'll still be interesting on Friday.
  • Watch for the signs: five tabs deep, reading something you weren't looking for, forgetting the original question. That's the moment to reread your goal.

How do you recover from interruptions?

In a study of about 10,000 recorded programming sessions, Chris Parnin and Spencer Rugaber found that only about 1 in 10 sessions resumed editing within a minute of an interruption, and in only 7% did programmers start editing without first navigating around to rebuild their context (Parnin & Rugaber, 2011). Getting back into code takes time, and an ADHD brain may lose the thread entirely.

Leave a breadcrumb before every switch:

  • A one-line note: "Next: handle the null case in parseUser, then rerun the auth tests."
  • A failing test that points at what you were about to do.
  • A TODO comment at the exact line, or a work-in-progress commit with the next step in the message.

This is the "ready-to-resume" idea from workplace research: briefly planning your return before switching reduced attention residue and improved performance on the interrupting task (Leroy & Glomb, 2018). More on interruptions in how to focus at work with ADHD.

How do you start a big ticket?

A ticket like "Implement SSO" is a wall. Shrink it until the first step is obvious and small:

  1. Read the existing auth flow and write three bullet points about it.
  2. Add one failing test for the first redirect.
  3. Make that test pass.

The first step should take minutes, not hours. If you can't see it, the task splitter will draft a checklist for you, and how to start a task with ADHD has the full method.

Why are estimates so hard, and what helps?

Many people with ADHD find it hard to feel how much time has passed or how long something will take (more in time blindness tools). Software estimates are hard for everyone; ADHD adds a layer.

  • Estimate the small steps, not the ticket. "3 steps × 1 hour" is more honest than "half a day."
  • Guess, then check. Write your guess before you start and the real time when you finish. After a few weeks you'll know your personal multiplier.
  • Add buffer on purpose, and say so out loud: "I estimate two days, and I'm historically optimistic."

What about hyperfocus?

Coding can trigger long, deep stretches of hyperfocus, which can be wonderful or can eat dinner, sleep and the ticket you were actually supposed to do. Aim it at the right task, set two alarms (a heads-up and a stop), and leave a next-step note before you stop. More in ADHD hyperfocus.

How do you set up your environment?

  • Notifications off during focus blocks. Check chat and code reviews at set times.
  • One screen for the task, with only the windows it needs.
  • Sound on purpose: noise or instrumental music, not lyrics, when you're reading or writing code (focus music for ADHD).
  • Pair programming can work like body doubling for hard or boring tasks.

Sources

  • Liebel, G., Langlois, N., & Gama, K. (2024). Challenges, strengths, and strategies of software engineers with ADHD: A case study. Proceedings of the 46th International Conference on Software Engineering: Software Engineering in Society, 57–68. doi.org/10.1145/3639475.3640107
  • Morris, M. R., Begel, A., & Wiedermann, B. (2015). Understanding the challenges faced by neurodiverse software engineering employees. Proceedings of the 17th International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers & Accessibility, 173–184. doi.org/10.1145/2700648.2809841
  • Meyer, A. N., Fritz, T., Murphy, G. C., & Zimmermann, T. (2014). Software developers' perceptions of productivity. Proceedings of the 22nd ACM SIGSOFT International Symposium on Foundations of Software Engineering, 19–29. doi.org/10.1145/2635868.2635892
  • Parnin, C., & Rugaber, S. (2011). Resumption strategies for interrupted programming tasks. Software Quality Journal, 19(1), 5–34. doi.org/10.1007/s11219-010-9104-9
  • Leroy, S., & Glomb, T. M. (2018). Tasks interrupted: How anticipating time pressure on resumption of an interrupted task causes attention residue and low performance on interrupting tasks and how a "ready-to-resume" plan mitigates the effects. Organization Science, 29(3), 380–397. doi.org/10.1287/orsc.2017.1184

This article is for general information, not medical advice. If you think you might have ADHD, or you're thinking about changing your treatment, talk to a qualified health professional. How we research and write.

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